Skype suffers widespread outage

Skype suffered a major service disruption today affecting users worldwide. They are unable to make voice calls because the software shows that all their contacts are offline even if those people were actually logged in. Users are also unable to change their status. The messaging functionality of Skype is still mostly working properly, though the company notes "a small number of messages to group chats are not being delivered."

"We have detected an issue with the status settings of Skype," Skype engineer Leonas Sendrauskas wrote in a blog post. "We're working on a fix for this issue and hope to have an update for you soon," Sendrauskas said. "Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience caused while we get this resolved."

In a later message, the company announced that it had identified the problem.

"We're in the process of reconnecting our users, and focused on restoring full service. The issue did not affect Skype for Business users," it said.

It's important to note that the status issue doesn't affect Skype for web, which can still be used to make calls and send instant messages.